What I Learned From A Long Walk To School
The following is a new chapter from a memoir in progress, which I hope to finish by the end of this year. The book is an attempt to explain my experience of fatherhood to myself. While I’ve polished the following essay to some extent, it remains very much a draft. I welcome feedback on clarity, style, and the larger ethical questions I’ve raised about memoir in my craft series.
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What I Learned From A Long Walk To School
My father kept a paddle in his closet that featured a bear cub trailing a fawn. The inscription read, “For the cute little deer with the bear behind.” It seems to be making a comeback on Etsy as a retro item, though for assuredly different purposes now.
Typically a trip to the bedroom required a serious offense, like the time a classmate and I were flipping each other off on the playground, experimenting with the proper technique. Did you just lift your finger from your fist like a lone tree, or did you frame it with your index and ring fingers for clearer effect?
The teacher who caught us in the act did not for a second believe that we had a purely academic interest in the subject, and she marched us to the school’s boiler room, where the principal kept a paddle for just such a purpose.
I can still conjure that dungeon-like space even though I saw it just once forty years ago. The serrated tread on the stairs. The groaning boiler, steel pipes, bare concrete floor. I’d never seen the inside of a jail then, not even in the movies, but I expect the environment was part of the intended effect. If you don’t shape up now, you’ll find yourself somewhere like this again.